All posts tagged Ferrari

Ferrari said its Formula One cars will carry the flag of the Italian Navy at the Indian Grand Prix this weekend in solidarity with two Italian naval officers who were detained in India earlier this year after allegedly killing two Indian fishermen.

Scuderia Ferrari has thrown out that old-fashioned idea that sports and politics shouldn’t mix, in a statement describing the decision to carry the navy flag as a tribute to “one of the outstanding entities of our country.”

BEIJING—As a Chinese court prepares to expose the alleged crimes of former Communist Party highflier Bo Xilai, censors and security officials have been trying to bury a separate scandal that has emboldened critics of President Hu Jintao and could complicate efforts to restore the party’s tarnished image.

Just three days after Mr. Bo was fired as party chief of Chongqing in March, the 23-year-old son of President Hu’s closest confidant crashed a black Ferrari at 4 a.m. on a snow-slickened Beijing ring road.

After a decade of up-and-down stock-market returns and widespread fears that the bull market in bonds could turn into a bubble, money managers are pitching new asset classes—from wine to musical instruments—that investors can use to diversify their holdings.

A few firms are even putting together private funds that let investors pool their money to buy portfolios of these assets, often charging hedge-fund-like fees of 2% of assets and 20% of gains.

The idea of a 1960s Ford car and a multi-million-dollar price tag appearing in the same sentence or even on the same page seemed far-fetched — until now. A 1968 Ford GT40 race car sold for $11 million at RM Auctions’ California sale last night.

The sale price is a new record for an American car sold at auction, RM said.

RM’s sale was one of many events that make up a top-shelf annual collector-car weekend on California’s Monterey Peninsula.

There was a rare display of supercars in downtown Seoul Wednesday morning – not in a fancy showroom but in the parking lot of the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Those cars, a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640, Porsche Carrera S, Mercedes-Benz E350, Ferrari 612, and Dodge Magnum, were all seized from now-defunct Gangwon Domin Savings Bank, which loaned the money for the cars but had to take possession of them when they couldn’t be repaid.

The five were among 17 supercars found covered with dust in a bank-owned garage in a Seoul suburb a few months ago.

BOSTON—In an effort to dispel reports that he led a luxurious lifestyle, Bo Guagua, the Chinese “princeling” at Harvard and son of a deposed Communist leader, this week denied he ever drove a Ferrari. But Mr. Bo has racked up three traffic citations in Massachusetts—and according to a person familiar with the matter, he was driving a black Porsche.

Mr. Bo is the son of Bo Xilai, the ousted party chief of Chongqing, China, and his wife Gu Kailai, who is under suspicion in China for the murder of a British businessman.

Flashy sports cars valued at as much as $4 million became a mangled mess in a matter of minutes on Sunday when a Ferrari leading a pack of exotic sports cars on a trip from Japan’s southern island of Kyushu to Hiroshima skidded as it tried to change lanes. When the smoke cleared, eight Ferraris and one Lamborghini in a 20-vehicle group driven by amateur sports car aficionados were among the cars banged up in the 14-car pile-up. About 10 people suffered minor injuries in the accident on Sunday morning on a 400 meter-long curve, according to the Yamaguchi prefecture police. Some have already been discharged from the hospital.

People who collect Ferraris or simply covet them from afar spend a lot of time trying to decide when a model of a certain age, like a decade-old 550 or 575 Maranello, has “hit bottom” in terms of depreciation. The idea is that once a car is fully depreciated it may soon begin to grow in value. It could also be a good value for bargain shoppers.

But you can’t could on either of those being true, as this old Maranello shows. I spotted it at a local service station that typically displays a handful of used cars for sale. Some of its recent offerings have been tempting: a red Audi convertible, a vintage Jeep Cherokee and a Mazda Miata. But this isn’t where you’d expect — or want — to go shopping for a Ferrari that once retailed for more than $200,000.

Auction house RM Auctions says it will highlight its January sale in Arizona with a group of rare Ferraris ranging from a one-off 1957 410 Superamerica to a 1991 F40.

The Blenheim, Ontario, classic-car specialist says its sale at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa on January 19 and 20 will include “a handpicked selection” of about 150 cars including historic sports and racing models, 1920s and 1930s classics from the U.S. and Europe, and even Detroit muscle cars.

The RM event is one of several January sales in Arizona, including the huge and long-running Barrett-Jackson auction, that serve as barometers indicating the relative health of the collector-car business.

Muscle-car fans were excited last winter when Chevrolet said it would build a hotrod version of its Camaro coupe called the ZL1 with a supercharged engine putting out about 550 horsepower. Now it looks as if the General Motors division was being modest.

The car, which is due to roll off the assembly line early next year, now has an official rating of 580 horsepower. So while the 2012 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1’s 6.2-literL engine is not the biggest ever stuffed into a factory Camaro, it is the most powerful.

While the car is designed mainly to compete with hopped-up special editions of the Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger, it is also meant to outgun higher-priced, even exotic, machinery from the likes of Porsche, Ferrari and others.